Erphaan and Kes want fans to pick a side

DESPITE being a relatively new genre of music, soca has appealed to countless people of varied cultures and ages a world over.

The reason for this is simply because of its fluidity as an art form – it can be whatever you want it to be.

Born from this concept of varied soca sub-genres, soca stars Erphaan Alves and Kees Dieffenthaller have brought their respective fan bases together by forcing them to pick a side, in a positive way.

Both artistes have enjoyed considerable success for Carnival 2020 with the launch of their single Pick a Side which plays on the similarities and differences of both performers.

At first glance, with the exception of their performing careers, both men seem to have almost nothing in common.

Alves' fast-paced, high-intensity rhythm and lyrics contrasted against Dieffenthaller's more laid-back, relaxed style of performing would have many long-time fans confused over the collaboration, but their history goes back almost a decade ago. In 2012, Alves wrote the song Precision Wine for Dieffenthaller.

Alves told Newsday it was a pleasure being able to work alongside Dieffenthaller again for Pick a Side.

"There was a mutual interest in doing a song together for quite some time now, but I was the first one to reach out on an idea to bring both of our strengths together and create a power soca track. It's not something our fans would have expected from artistes who have been more popular for groovy songs."

Alves said the song has special significance for him as it was his last track to be released for the Carnival season.

The track enjoyed popularity with over 200,000 views on YouTube since its release in January, and making the top 100 most played songs for Apple Music just ten days after its release.

Alves said he was especially proud of the feedback from party-goers over the live performances as it was testament to the showmanship and performing abilities of both artistes.

"The chemistry was great between us for the live performances. It was interesting, us being two artistes from such varied backgrounds, coming together for a song. We didn't do any practising it was all natural in terms of our interactions on stage, so, it was good. We're not on opposing sides, we're all on the soca side."

That aspect of unity is a recurring theme in the song and both artistes have swapped T-shirts bearing each other's logos.

In many ways, Alves and Dieffenthaller's single forces their fans to rediscover the genre of soca by listening to styles they may have been unfamiliar with.

The concept of mixing and contrasting starkly-different personalities has had its successes.

In 1933 Swiss psychologist Carl Jung theorised that human nature could be divided into good and bad tendencies.

Eastern philosophy also described the concept of light and dark forces through yin and yang.

In their own way, both Dieffenthaller and Alves have added their twist to the age-old concept of opposites finding common ground.

Both artistes bring out the best in each other for the single as Alves' characteristic grittiness and energy sets the pace while Dieffenthaller's soca-crooner voice keeps the vibe going.

With production by Lunatix Productions, the song, which has already created waves at fetes nationwide, promises fans from either side of the soca divide a good time, no matter what their preference is.